undead

*Update: Deep Silver also announced that starting today those who preorder the game at GameStop, Amazon.com and Best Buy can get an “extremely limited edition SteelBook. It looks like this. It’s also posted at the bottom of this page.

Deep Silver released new details on Dead Island Riptide, the sequel to its 2011 hit. The same cast, which includes Sam B, Xian Mei, Logan Carter and Purna, are returning. The crew makes it off Banoi and land on a military ship. But unfortunately, a storm hits the vessel creating havoc, and well, it looks like they end up shipwrecked on another island full of more zombies.

Personally, at this point, I’d be sick and tired of it all and just turn myself into the undead but it looks like the old crew plus a mysterious fifth character will fight to survive on the island of Palanai and its city of Henderson. The main improvements of the game, according to the news release, is that there’s dynamic weather conditions that will affect visibility. I guess it’s going to be harder fighting zombies in the rain and mist. To make matters worse, the only mode of transportation across the flooded islands is by boat, the release says. I figure that means instead of controlling cars, the developer, Techland, wants players to push around row boats.

In addition, there are also new hub defense missions where players will have to work together to place traps, fences and turrets to keep the undead at bay. Along with that, players will have new skillsets and a way to better communicate in co-op modes.

Dead Island Riptide is planned for release in 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Here’s the ZombiU box art and the first piece of box art I’ve seen for any Wii U game. Yes, it looks scary. Yes, it shows off that it is set in London. If the foot guard in the Bearskin cap didn’t give it away, you can see Big Ben in the background. The zombie on left, above the foot guard’s shoulder, looks like an undead Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell: Conviction.

The only other curious thing is the nice swoosh on the top. It makes me wonder if all the Wii U boxes will be that shade of blue. It kind of reminds me of the old GameCube covers. What do you guys think?